Pray Tell Me, Sir, Whose Dog Are You?
Alexander Pope had this couplet engraved on the collar of a puppy he presented to Frederick, Prince of Wales in the 1730s: I am his highness’s dog at Kew; Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you? The implication is, of course, that everyone has a master for whom he must roll over and do tricks. One of the questions that I almost never heard addressed in my years studying in English departments was how writers must actually get money The assumption seems to have been that the act of producing metaphors was so inherently valuable that they all essentially lived F Scott Fitzgerald style lives. This was in the 1960s and 70s. There may be other, post-modern interpretations now, but I doubt if the actual business of writing ever gets much attention. My wife and I were late adopters of cable, and for many years, we had only a simple tube TV with a rabbit ear antenna, which meant that much of watching was limited to PBS and the News Hour. Republican thought was represented by David Gergen...